


Scars

by hexereii



Category: Fantastic Four (Comicverse)
Genre: Angst and Feels, Emotional Baggage, Gen, Injury Recovery, Love/Hate, M/M, Or Just Love With Poor Timing, Possibly Unrequited Love, Time Travel, Unresolved Emotional Tension, Victor Wants To Comfort SO BADLY
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-19
Updated: 2019-10-19
Packaged: 2020-12-23 19:31:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,523
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21086633
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hexereii/pseuds/hexereii
Summary: Whump prompt, but since I have a very loose grasp of "whump" it's really just angst.Set simultaneously during Infamous Iron Man and during the Waid F4 run ("Authoritative Action" was the arc) because time travel.No relationship between the two, they're just feeling their private feelings and suffering through grief/loss together, separated by time and circumstances. It's a lot of tragedy and feels.





	Scars

Had there been any other choice, had the one item he needed been reachable from any other point in the timeline… but of course, it was not. Fate, Victor had long believed, was like any other living thing–it had a sense of humor, and a decidedly vicious one at that.

And so it was that he stepped off the time platform and back into Latveria again. Into a courtyard surrounded by gleaming, undamaged walls, overgrown by weeds, but certainly in better repair than the version he’d left behind. 

This was his homeland, as it had stood under the rule of four people he’d once considered mortal enemies–or something like that, anyway. The flicker of something bright overhead caught his eye and Victor paused for a moment, scowling up in confusion until sense was made of the sight: a pale blue shirt marked with a darker, encircled “4” that rippled and snapped in the sharp winter air, flown like a ludicrous flag from the castle’s central tower. Odd, the simultaneous pang of rage–vestigial now, little more than the shameful echo of something stronger–and a surge of bittersweet _pride_.

He knew whose uniform shirt that was.

  
The story had been told to him more than once of Richards, driven equally by vengeance and a misguided (however noble the intent, colonialism was colonialism) desire to bring “freedom” and “democracy” to Latveria. Of how he’d taken off his own damned shirt and hoisted it like a conquer’s banner over his enemy’s own home.

Doom gave the waving slip of blue a tight-lipped smile. He knew his people; it would never have worked. But he also knew his enemy; Reed had to try, no matter how impossible the task. 

There was no undoing the past. Best if he finish this quickly and leave–with no armor to reduce the noise. Unshielded against the memories, yes, that was necessary, but at this hour there should be no difficulty at all.

Doom straighten the cuffs of his coat and tugged it more closely around his body. He’d grown thinner and knew it, it was hard not to recognize the way his cheekbones stood out or how his figure had dwindled from ‘menacing’ to merely 'dapper.’ He had no appetite, and didn’t know why. On his worst days, he felt as though he had died along with Richards and his family and was gradually becoming a wraith of some sort. Fitting, that he would be left to wander without rest while they–

The shortcut was blocked. Why hadn’t he thought of that? Standing awkwardly in his own study, staring at his desk, eyes scanning across the open books he recognize and several that he didn’t, Victor held his breath and didn’t know quite what to do. His path was interrupted by the chair, and asleep in it, slumped across the pages and scattered sheets of notes in a hurried, untidy hand, lay Reed himself. One arm was curled to support his head, cheek resting against the knuckles. The skin on that side was gnarled and rippled with angry red weals: scars Doom himself had given.

For a few seconds, the pain was almost physical; a gut-punch of memory and guilt and horror, all rolled into one sickening, awful reality.

_ 'I’ll spend the rest of my life forgetting you,’_ Reed had said.

_ 'Think again,’ _he’d replied, drawing on hellfire for the first time and using it to burn an imprint of his hand onto that haunting, hated face.

_ 'Now you’ll know what it’s like,’_ he’d thought, delighting in the notion of Richards, unable to face himself in the mirror again. Of his wife and children turning from him in disgust.

_ (Of being hated, so long as it meant that he was never, ever forgotten. So long as **Reed **never forgot him.)_

The hands at his sides clenched slowly into fists–he’d trained himself to show nothing more of his emotion than this. He was Victor von Doom; he could not cry out or fall back or kneel beside that sleeping man and ask his forgiveness.

_ (He wanted to do all of those things.)_

Trapped in his own foolish stoicism, just as he’d been in his ridiculous armor. In his identity as 'Doctor’ Doom. In his blind hatred of a man who had saved him, healed him, set him free.

Victor slowly relaxed his hands, the fingertips of one carefully touching his own unblemished cheek.

The tears happened quite naturally, and that surprised him.

There wasn’t a single word of apology he could offer here; there was nothing that Reed would accept from him and he knew it. Seeing him at all would only make him fear the worst, and Victor couldn’t bear the thought of facing that anger from him. Not now. 

This would have been just after Benjamin’s death. Just after–

He covered his eyes with his hand; the fingers trembled.

_ 'After I forced him to kill his best friend.’_

“Reed…” It was barely more than a gasp, but there was only so much emotion he could contain without something spilling out. Whatever else he’d been, he was still human, after all.

Everything he’d done to this man, all of the pain he’d caused, and he could change none of it. Richards’ sleep had turned fitful, brow wrinkled and lips moving wordlessly. A dream turned nightmare.

“…Doom,” he whispered. Victor could hear the bitterness in it; Reed never called him that unless he’d done something so egregious that he simply couldn’t bear to think of him as the man he’d always known, anymore. Until he’d lost all hope–which meant almost never.

He’d never admitted how much he hated to hear him say it, and this… this was worse by far. There was hatred there, and fear, and rage. All of it well-deserved.

Reed murmured the name again and Victor studied his handiwork–the physical damage and whatever went on in his subconscious mind that couldn’t be seen–would this be the last time he saw his old friend alive? The last memory he was allowed to keep of that face?

_ (Was it any less than he deserved?)_

Unarmored. Unprotected. Gazing down at the man he’d wronged in more ways than most people could even imagine. Victor refused to walk away.

Yes. He did deserve this.

And he knew it.

Slowly, he crouched beside Reed, extending one hand with great care–if he was slow enough, gentle enough, he could at least offer a night of uninterrupted rest; push his consciousness into a deeper level of sleep, where nightmares couldn’t follow. He couldn’t undo any of the wrongs he’d done, but he could grant him a few hours of peace and forgetfulness.

A small enough thing, really.

Richards opened his eyes abruptly before Victor ever made contact, and for a second, neither of them moved.

He recovered just in time to teleport away, down into the sub-basement of the castle, exactly where the item he’d come for was kept. Best if he completed his task without thinking about what had just happened–about how his heart was pounding or the tears still blurring his vision. This far below, he didn’t have to worry about making too much noise–not that he cared very much about that now anyway. The armor had closed up around him before he’d even completed transport. No one would ever know that he was practically breaking down inside it.

** ** ** ** ** ** **

Reed stared at the empty space, rubbing his eyes and struggling to gather his thoughts again. The… apparition? Hallucination? Whatever it was, it had looked exactly like Victor, but completely healed and… stranger still, it looked as if he’d been crying. There was _compassion_ on that face, there was _regret_ there.

Cradling his head in his hands, flinching at touch of rigid scar tissue against one palm, Reed gave in to despair, if only for a few seconds.

Obviously, his mind had conjured up what he most wanted to see–his old friend, genuinely caring about others. About him. About the damage he’d done. How often had he imagined a scene similar to that one, after all? A repentant Victor, finally recognizing the error of his ways, recoiling from his own handiwork in horror or reaching out to repair it?

_ (How many times had he wished, deep down in the silence of his own mind, for Victor to just… love him back?)_

Better that he know now exactly how impossible that was. Doom had finally won–he’d wanted Reed broken, in heart, in mind, in spirit, and he’d accomplished all of those things, evidently. (His heart. Would anyone ever understand how many ways Victor had broken that? Would he ever understand it himself? There was nothing left to pin together again. There were no final shreds of hope remaining. Not for him. That was the thing that hurt the most.)

Those feelings were a closed book, now. Victor was gone, just like the… dream. It must have been a dream. But being reminded of Doom and all the things he’d done, of where all of this had started–that might help him save Ben. 


End file.
